HANS SILVESTER

By THE NEW YORK TIMES

Published: September 26, 2008

HANS SILVESTER

Painted People

Marlborough

545 West 25th Street, Chelsea

Through Oct. 11

At once revelatory and disturbing, these color photographs taken over the last five years by Hans Silvester, a German photographer, document the extraordinary body painting of the Surma and Mursi peoples of the Omo Valley in southern Ethiopia. Semi-nomadic warriors, they live primarily by keeping large herds of cattle; their only Western accessory seems to be the Kalashnikov rifles they trade with Sudanese tribes.

They paint themselves or one another two or three times a day, using pigment made from earth or ground stone mixed with water. Executed quickly, the abstract, vibrantly patterned motifs reflect a sophisticated vocabulary of mark-making, finger-painting and hand-printing techniques; they extend across faces and sometimes center on a single feature, like a breast. They function as personal decoration, cultural expression and, when ash and cattle urine are added, insect repellent. Mr. Silvester says these people's interest in their painting supersedes any in sculpture, mask making, music or dance.

Mr. Silvester's pictures are almost exclusively closely cropped views of painted torsos, which objectify the subjects and enable us to look at them without them looking back. Yet the ephemeral art we encounter is humbling; it further erodes the idea of abstraction or painting as Western forms. They become basic human traits, expressed here with a skill that accrues through daily practice from childhood on. I'm grateful to learn of their existence, but can't help wondering what, if anything, art-world attention might bring them. ROBERTA SMITH